NUREMBEG TRIAL OF NAZI WAR CRIMINALS

PART 2

by Jayantha Gunasekera,

President’s Counsel

Hitler’s meteoric rise from obscurity to near Emperor of Germany, and perhaps the Emperor of the whole world, commenced in the 1930s. He had designs to RULE and not govern the whole world. The word “democracy” was virtually erased from the vocabulary.

The Weimar Republic expired and the ageing President Field Marshall Von Hindenberg had to cave in to make room for Hitler. Hitler was possessed of demonic personality, a granite will, uncanny instincts, ruthlessness, remarkable intellect, a soaring imagination and towards the end, when drunk with power and success, overreached himself. To some Germans it appeared that a charlatan had come to power.

To most Germans Hitler would shortly assume the aura of a truly charismatic leader. They were to follow him blindly for the next several tempestuous years as if he possessed a divine judgement. Considering his origins and his early life it would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely figure to succeed Bismark, the Hohenzollern Emperors and President Hindenberg, than this Austrian of peasant stock, who was born 1889 across the borders from Bavaria.

He called himself the Fuehrer, and his word was Law. Anyone who dared to challenge him was tortured and put to death. Thence continued the Nazification of Germany. I give below a short account of the vanquished Nazi War Criminals who were indicted before the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal set up by the Allies in the war ravaged city.

These Trials had a great influence on the development of International Law. The definition of what constitutes a War Crime is described by the NUREMBERG PRINCIPLES, a document which was created as a result of this Trial.

The Nuremberg Trials initiated a movement for the prompt establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court. Conclusion of the Trials culminated in the drafting of :

1. the Genocide Convention of 1946,

2. Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

3. the Convention on the Abolition of Statue of Limitation on War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity,

4. the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War and its Supplementary Protocol.

Twenty Four Nazi War Criminals were indicted for :

a. participation in a common plan of conspiracy for the accomplishment of crimes against peace;

b. planning initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace;

c. war crimes and

d. crimes against humanity.

The Judges who tried the War Criminals were

a. Major General Iona Nikitchenko (Soviet main)

b. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Volchkov (Soviet alternate)

c. Lord Justice Colonel Sir Geoffrey Lawrence (British main), President of the Tribunal

d. Sir Norman Birkett (British alternative)

e. Francis Biddle (American main)

f. John J. Parker (American alternative)

g. Professor Henri Donnedieu de Vabres (French main)

h. Robert Falco (French alternative)

Chief prosecutors

I. Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross (United Kingdom)

II. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (United States)

III. Lieutenant-General Roman Andreyevich Rudenko (Soviet Union)

IV. François de Menthon, later replaced by Auguste Champetier de Ribes (France)

Assisting Jackson were the lawyers Telford Taylor, William S. Kaplan and Thomas J. Dodd, and Richard Sonnenfeldt, a US Army interpreter. Assisting Shawcross were Major Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe and Sir John Wheeler-Bennett. Mervyn Griffith-Jones, who was later to become famous as the chief prosecutor in the Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscenity trial, was also on Shawcross’s team. Shawcross also recruited a young barrister, Anthony Marreco, who was the son of a friend of his, to help the British team with the heavy workload.

Rudolf Hess who was one time deputy of Hitler was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Spandau Prison was maintained at the final stages, only for the incarceration of Hess, for a period of nearly 20 years.. He committed suicide in 1987, aged 93.

According to his wishes he was finally laid to rest in Wunstedel church yard in Bavaria.

Life imprisonment was strictly life imprisonment – no less. No commutation for good behaviour.

The Sri Lankan Judges enjoy an impeccable reputation for being just and fair. Whilst American Justices are appointed not always for their legal skills and fairness but for their Political Convictions.